Robert Shapiro

Robert Shapiro is chairman of the economic and security advisory firm Sonecon, a Senior Policy Fellow at the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, and the former Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs from 1997 to 2001.

Aaron Bernstein/Pool via AP Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Attorney General Jeff Sessions T he decennial census is a vital instrument in how Americans live their lives. Right now, the 2020 census is at risk and, with it, much that matters to all of us. The Trump administration, led here by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is seeking to use the census to send a message to President Trump’s base and to disadvantage their political opponents. Dismissing the advice and warnings of the statisticians and social scientists who oversee the Census Bureau, they have decided to include a question about every person’s citizenship status in the 2020 census. The result could well be a census that misses tens of millions of people, with consequences that will reverberate across the country. Although most pundits believe that the adverse impact will be concentrated in a few blue states, closer analysis shows it could cost blue, purple, and red states seats in...